A Silly Dream
by drinktea
Summary: Riku used to dream that she'd be taken over by a fairytale. DarkRiku. Set in Manga Volume Seven.


_Disclaimer: D N Angel belongs to Yukiru Sugisaki. This story belongs to me._

Author natterings: A large part of this was extracted from volume seven of the manga, where Dark and Riku drop into the world of the Guardian of Time. Dialogue is taken straight from the translated version of D N Angel to remain true to the actual story. My own framing, twists and insight into the Dark x Riku relationship is added of course.  
As an aside, this story was named so because of what Dark said the morning after he spoke to Riku on the way to school as Daisuke. It seemed fitting.  
Reviews are appreciated, but not necessary. Thanks for reading.

**A Silly Dream**

_Ice and Snow_ was a renowned fairytale, a story of undying love. The kind of story to hear and then tell and then retell.

A young Riku, hearing it one day, brown eyes wide as saucers, tears gathering, had wished for a love like that of her own. If only she could be so lucky.

--------

As she grew, Riku found it harder to believe that a tale like that could be hers. Sitting at her desk at school, obscenities scrawled all over it, reality gripped her ankles and held her fast.

It was wrong to wish, but her life would never be torn apart by war. There didn't exist a kind of magic so strong to exchange one's time with another's. Her life would never contain the drama needed to prove a perfect love.

And without knowing it, one day she put it on ice. Her fairytale would simply hang frozen in time. At least until she was approached by the right man to revive it.

--------

"Whew! That was a close one!"

Riku hung almost limply from surprise, suspended by a limb. There was one thing wrong about this whole thing though.

The limb wasn't hers.

"Hey! Let go of my chest, you pervert!" she yelled full force, wriggling and heaving from lack of breath.

"How else am I supposed to hold onto y--"

"LET GO!" she commanded, kicking out and connecting with air.

"Hey! Hold still-- what are y-- Riku!"

With a soft _thump_ they landed.

She looked up from the ground a little disoriented, the scenery white and blue. Snow? Her fingers clenched. "What's happening? Where are we?"

"Are you okay?" Dark asked her.

"Yes," she replied absently.

"In that case, would you please get off of me?"

"Huh?" she said. Was his voice coming... from beneath her? She looked down puzzledly, her shoulder-length hair falling into her line of vision. And lo and behold, also in her field of vision...

"It's very cold down here in the snow," he said good-naturedly. His perfect nose was jammed sideways into the snow. The shocking white of the snow stood in a stark contrast to the red of his eyes and the purple of his hair. She almost gasped.

To cover this up, she let out a half-scream and pretty much jumped off of him, almost falling on her butt into the snow. "I was sitting on you?"

"Oh, it's okay," he told her, "I didn't mind." To prove this, he brushed snow from his hair, eyes closed, with nonchalance. He looked terribly fashionable in an obviously custom black trenchcoat something or other, and sleek black gloves to compliment his thief look. One of them was torn, presumedly from hanging onto the tree branch.

She tried not to notice his impeccable taste (or his, okay, nice face) too much, averting her gaze from him. "I'm sorry."

He just looked at her, smiling.

"Hey..." she said suddenly, staring at his hand, nestled in the snow. "Your hand... did you hurt it on the tree?"

He lifted it now, looking at it for her benefit. "Oh, this. It's not a big deal. Just a scratch."

She scowled at him, a surprising amount of anger on her face. "Oh, please!" She walked over to him, fed up with his tough guy act. It had to hurt. It was bleeding all over the place, for heaven sakes! "It'll get infected! Let me fix that! Give me your hand!" She grabbed it without a thought, her other hand going to the headband in her hair. She pulled the cloth out easily and slipped it over Dark's cold fingers.

He watched her with tender eyes. They stood together for a minute or so, Riku slowly dressing his wound, as the snow fell softly around them. Time seemed to pass slowly.

"Wow." His voice was soft and deep.

She halted for a moment, then went on wrapping. "What is it?" She looked up, and was startled to find he was looking right back.

He spoke the words so kindly, she wondered if there was more to him than she thought. "You're... actually worried about me?"

She inhaled sharply. Then she promptly let go, protesting for all she was worth, "No way! I just don't want you blaming me if your hand gets messed up! Why on earth would I worry about you?!"

He smirked but she didn't see it.

She continued, hoping to move forward from such an _embarassing_ episode, "And now, tell me-- where are we? Where have you taken me?"

The mirth left his eyes. To her sadness, Dark looked strangely fragile. "It's a dream world." She watched him raise a hand to the sky, fingers stretched. The falling snow collected in his hair and on his shoulders. "A world that's both real... and yet not real."

A dream world? Real but not real?

Riku looked hesitantly around. Come to think of it, the snow wasn't cold at all. There had to be tons of it, stretching beyond the horizon, fluffy and white and _feeling_ like snow. But it wasn't.

So was this... _her_ dream? And if it was...

Why was she stuck in here with this perverted creep?!

Riku clenched her teeth at this new realization, and just about whirled around to knock Dark off his feet again, when--

"Riku!"

"What?" She turned around to come face to face with Dark's jawline.

That jawline moved under her gaze, Dark's voice low. "Looks like the welcoming committee's here."

Zombified and just snapping out of it, Riku dumbly said, "Welcoming...?"

The jawline moved again when Dark nodded in the direction of the horizon. Riku slowly transferred her gaze to the barely visible line between sky and snow...

Where an army of very large, very intimidating guards were marching. Straight toward them.

"What are those?!" she panicked.

"No need to worry," Dark said, in the exact infuriating manner The Hero does before mopping the floor with The Enemy. Riku could only hope that this would happen, as much as it made her want to grab him by the collar and shake him silly.

They were getting closer. Their dress was kind of Arabian. Like those guys from _Aladdin_. Only, those flaps around their faces were pretty menacing looking... nothing like those emperors.

Try as she (obviously) might, Riku could not ignore the fact that they were _still_ getting closer and Dark was doing nothing so far.

"Dark! Shouldn't you be--"

Closer.

"-- doing something by now?!"

Closer.

Dark turned to look at her, an absolutely frustrating smile on his face. "Calm down. I have a plan."

"Well, you better--"

Dark grabbed her hand then, and lifted it into the air. She felt her hair rise, getting ready to yank it away and glare at him for all she was worth. And then--

"We surrender."

--------

"_We surrender?!_"

Dark sat passively on the stone floor next to her in what was presumedly the dungeon of the castle they had been imprisoned in. He looked so okey-dokey with this that she could scream.

Riku continued on her tirade. "We surrender?! I don't believe this! You, the Legendary Phantom Thief Dark! All it takes is a few strong guys showing up and you surrender?!"

Dark now looked calmly at her, as if deciding if she was crazy or not.

"You're hardly even a man, much less some phantom thief! You didn't even fight them!" She crouched now, to properly sob into her knees.

"Fight them?" he echoed.

"Where's your sense of pride? Letting us be tied up like this--"

And then, right in front of her nose, Dark held up a long segment of rope between his gloved fingers. His chin was resting nonchalantly in his other palm, his eyebrow lifted up. "Hm? Tied up like what?"

She was struck instantly with surprise. How did he...

"Look. Surrendering... was the fastest way to get inside. I couldn't exactly break in with you tagging along." He piqued an eyebrow in her direction, and her immediate reaction was to blush and look away, embarassed at his logic countering her temper. Yeah. That was it.

"Now we're both safely inside."

She fidgeted with her fingers behind her back, feeling foolish and adolescent at her outburst.

Dark talked some more while she obsessed about her stupidity.

So... what if she had blown up at him for, um, caring about her safety, not at all like the pervert she thought he was? God, he probably just cared because otherwise he wouldn't have her around to grope later.

And... so what if she was finding his voice very, very nice? It was probably just a product of her dream, because Dark certainly did not sound this... this... _good_ in actuality!

"Alright. Time to do my job," he said in his stupidstupidnice voice. His shoes made taps on the floor towards the door.

Riku was hit with the gravity of his words a little late. "Hang on a minute! Your job?! What are you doing?"

He looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes catching whatever available light there was and shining an incredibly striking shade of red. She was taken aback. He looked so serious.

He turned to fully face her, a strange wind whipping through the room and lifting his coattails. This wind wasn't normal wind. What kind of wind could blow through a solid stone tower? This was...

"Riku. If anything happens," -his voice was confident, tinged with a caring she couldn't deny- "Call me. Or Daisuke. Whichever you prefer."

"What?" was all she got out before he had disappeared, a few feathers the only thing he had left behind. What?! How did he--

"Wait! Whichever I prefer?" she called out to him, only to be left with no answer.

Daisuke? Why? How?

Dark flashed in her mind, the way he had looked right before he had left. The wind filtering through his hair, his unworldly grace, his red eyes right on her. In the middle of it all, her headband tied around his hand.

She bit her lip. She hoped he would be okay. She hoped she would be okay.

Because if something did happen to her, she didn't know who she preffered to call.

--------

Later that night, Dark carried an unconscious Riku back to her world, her bedroom. She had fallen asleep, the magic too much for her.

He lay her down in her bed, taking extra care to make sure her clothes weren't twisted, that the blanket was pulled up well around her shoulders. He brushed her hair from her face, fingers gracing a spot where a headband should've been.

He put his lips to the headband wrapped around his hand. He wouldn't forget. He hoped she wouldn't either.

Riku's fairytale began that night, and it was not a dream.


End file.
